You must be swift as the coursing riverWith all the strength of the great typhoon...

Yeah, sorry about that. Sorta. Anyway, reading Out of Hand and a couple of other cuckolding stories as well as a few very interesting articles on the nature of masculinity got me thinking. A cuckold is generally defined as a man having an adulterous wife. And though I used gender neutral terms (sort of) in my review of Out of Hand to account for an inclusive definition of the term, in the cases that I've encountered it as a fetish it's involved somebody with a dick butting into an existing relationship. Which brings me to the subject of masculinity.

Now, the trope with cuckolding stories/porn is that the bull, or interloper into the existing relationship, is more of a man than the cuckold. This is generally illustrated by the bull being dominant, able to boss both man and wife around, being taller, more muscled, and of course, having a bigger dick, higher libido, and the ability to fuck the wife into multiple orgasms. Also, and this is pretty much the defining factor among all the cuck stories that I've read, is that the bull is a massive jerk.

It doesn't help that the wife in these sorts of scenarios generally becomes complicit in beating down the cuckold. Using the third chapter of Out of Hand as an example, Sarah ends up relishing saying that Leslie isn't as manly as Ethan during the dwindling times he has sex with her, which actually causes Leslie to go harder. Earlier in the same chapter, she basically invites Ethan to the house over Leslie's misgivings, using thinner and thinner excuses until the pretense is dropped entirely. This behavior is tacitly encouraged by Ethan with the way that he treats Leslie as little more than a gopher, and purposefully arranging things to that Leslie ends up watching Ethan drill his wife.

Now, one might wonder why Ethan isn't the protagonist, here. After all, he doesn't seem to have much if any emotion aside of maybe anger, is tall, strong, and most importantly has a big, thick penis with which to make all the ladies moan and scream. In other words, he is an ideal male. That, and Leslie the fox is much, much less of a man, using all those standards as metrics of masculinity, being smaller in height and cock size, and generally a pushover. He also goes down on Ethan (gay stuff = not manly) and his primary role ends up being the clean up crew, licking up Sarah of all the seed spilled in her after Ethan is done. So wouldn't that make Ethan something to aspire to, to idealize? Not really. It's not just story purposes that would make Ethan a perfect antagonist especially in a story like this, but more the fact that Leslie has to essentially face down a high-school bully if he ever wants his girlfriend back, or at least salvage a shred of dignity. And with the way the story is going, the straw may never break the camel's back, or perhaps it wouldn't matter if it did.

In a way, it's kinda funny how Ethan would make a pretty great action hero, yet in this case he's the ideal antagonist, representing everything that Leslie is not. And I guess that's just what makes Leslie the ideal protagonist, though he seems to have a tendency to be completely blown away by the masculinity of others, and has this whole... jealousy kick with regard to it as well.